British, born in Manchester in 1971.

To a Certain Person

If one day I should find myself in pain,
In a predicament or in distress,
There's something you can do for me: refrain
From digging out my number and address.

Don't send your sympathy or kind regards.
Don't send your cash (as if you ever would),
Nor are your presents, telegrams and cards
Evidence that you wish me all things good.

You will profess to want to help. Then do--
A burst of honesty might make me smile.
Tell me that you believe I'm overdue
This, if not even more severe a trial.

Indulge yourself: applaud, rejoice, enthuse
And maybe soon I'll have some more bad news.

from First of the Last Chances

Rondeau Redoublé

I know the rules and hear myself agree
Not to invest beyond this one night stand.
I know your patter: in, out, like the sea.
The sharp north wind must blow away the sand.

Soon my supply will meet your last demand
And you will have no further use for me.
I will not swim against the tide, to land.
I know the rules. I hear myself agree.

I've kept a stash of hours, just two or three
To smuggle off your coast like contraband.
We will both manage (you more easily)
Not to invest beyond this one night stand.

To narrow-minded friends I will expand
On cheap not being the same as duty free.
I'll say this was exactly what I planned.
I know your pattern: in, out, like the sea.

It's not as if we were designed to be
Strolling along the beach front, hand in hand.
Things change, of natural necessity.
The sharp north wind must blow away the sand

And every storm to rage, however grand,
Will end in pain and shipwreck and debris
And each time there's a voice I have to strand
On a bare rock, hardened against its plea;
I know the rules.

Sophie Hannah

Terrific. Thanks for introducing me to her work.

Susan

Another one by Sophie Hannah - slighter perhaps but fun; from her first collection, The Hero and the Girl Next Door (1995):

Trainers All Turn Grey
(after Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay")

You buy your trainers new.
They cost a bob or two.
At first they're clean and white,
The laces thick and tight.
Then they must touch the ground -
(You have to walk around).
You learn to your dismay
Trainers all turn grey.

I think Certain Person is pretty mundane.
The Rondeau's a cracker though.
Best regards,
David

Sam,
While I smile at her dry cynicism I confess I find her voice unremarkable. I also dislike her capitalised lines which seem like an affectation when combined with rather unleavened language.
Janet

"To a Certain Person" reminds me of a masterpiece written and performed (alas) before this young author was born, Dylan's "Positively Fourth Street." One thing I like here is the little pattern of end stops and enjambments she creates for herself within the larger constraints: the third line of each quatrain runs over into the fourth, while all the others have some degree of end stop.
RPW

I find the (almost) relentless iambic pulse here as dull and mechanical as the doof doof thump of hip-hop.



------------------
Mark Allinson

"To a Certain Person" strikes me as a nice, original twist on the curse-poem genre--turning in L9 from outright curse to a petition for self-actualizing honesty! The ending may be read as an ambiguous toss-up between the two. Musically, it's proficient but I'm not overwhelmed. Thanks for posting it. Manchester poets are interesting in general--my favorite being John Ash.

John

I picked up the "Next Generation" pamphlet recently. Hannah's one of 20 tips for the top. After reading a poem or 2 of hers you know what the rest of the book's going to be like so browse before you buy. Long ago I thought that When Wendy Cope does the same kind of stuff she does it better, and does other things besides. Connie Bensley ("Choosing to be a Swan") is funnier. Even newcomers like Eleanor Brown ("Maiden Speech") are better in places. So why, even allowing for the usual hype, did Poetry Review call Hannah "A GENIUS"? ...A wider range of subject matter, a smaller selection of poems and some sharper lines would all have helped to improve the book.
Seeing the 20 blurbs in the pamphlet one after the other was too much for me.

• "It is difficult to pin down Nick Drake's poetry, which makes his book... all the more pleasurable to read"
• "There's rarely any doubt about what Sophie Hannah means in any of her poems. She is a communicator..."
• "... poems that remind us why memory is such an important human faculty"
• "Many of the poems are deceptively short"

etc.

The trainer take-off is terrific. Not really wowed by the other two, which seem at first read rather Cope-esque without Cope's fluidity or verve. (Line 12, for instance, of the Certain Person sonnet tripped me up a bit in sound and sense.) I'm very willing to be won over though, so would happily look at some more poems, or hear more appreciations.

In general, actually, I find that UK poets employ form with more energy and naturalness than the more self-consciously "formalist" poets in the US.

(By the way, I have no problem with the capitalized lines, since I do that myself. I see it as no more affected than writing in lines as opposed to paragraphs--hey, this is a poem, after all! And partly it's a generational thing, I think. I've noticed folks writing in form around my age have a tendency to cap. I understand where you are coming from, though, Janet--we can agree to disagree on this one.)

I checked out Hannah's First of the Last Chances yesterday. Though I found it to be uneven (what book of humor isn't? as Martial suggests), there were a few that had me laughing out loud. Here is one I liked.

Now and Then

'Now that I'm fifty-seven,'
My mother used to say,
'Why should I waste a minute?
Why should I waste a day

Doing the things I ought to
Simply because I should?
Now that I'm fifty-seven
I'm done with that for good.'

But now and then I catch her
Trapped in some thankless chore
Just as she might have been at
Fifty-three or fifty-four

And I would want to say to her
(And have to bite my tongue)
That if you mean to learn a skill
It's well worth starting young

And so, to make sure I'm in time
For fifty, I've begun
To do exactly as I please
Now that I'm thirty-one.

Very nice updating of "When I was one and twenty"...

Well, Tim, I agree that Sophie H has been overpraised (hardly her fault), that her work is very uneven and that her style and content range are (as in the piece I've posted below) similar to Cope's. However, I'm not sure that the latter makes so much use of complex syntax. Moreover, Hannah's experience of childbirth has opened up new thematic territory. (Cope is - to the best of my knowledge - childless.) Shall hope to post an example at a later date.

This is one that has stuck in my memory since a first reading in Poetry Review, Autumn 1998.

IN WOKINGHAM ON BOXING DAY AT THE EDINBURGH WOOLLEN MILL

Two earnest customers compare
a ribbed and unribbed sleeve.
I wonder what I'm doing here
and think I ought to leave,
get in my car and drive away.
I stand beside the till
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

All of the other shops are closed.
Most people are in bed.
Somehow I know that I'm supposed
to find an A-Z.
Somehow I sense I must obey
an unfamiliar will
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill,

somewhere perhaps you've never been.
I doubt you're into wool.
Even if mohair's not your scene
the atmosphere is full
of your proximity. I sway
and feel a little ill
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Wollen Mill.

The sales assistants wish me luck
and say they hope I find
the place I want. I have been stuck
with what I left behind,
with what I've been too scared to say,
too scared to say until
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Wollen Mill

I tell myself the time is now;
willingly I confess
my love for you to some poor cow
in an angora dress
whose get-lost-loony eyes convey
her interest, which is nil,
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

I find your house. You're still in bed.
I leave my gift and flee,
pleased with myself, not having said
how you can contact me,
driven by fears I can't allay,
dreams I did not fulfil
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

Chains are the most distressing shops.
They crop up everywhere.
The point at which the likeness stops
squeezes my lungs of air.
When I see jumpers on display
I wish that I was still
in Wokingham on Boxing Day
at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

NOTE Boxing Day= 26 December.

Margaret.

The last three lines of each stanza were indented in the original. SORRY!

For reasons I don't understand, I can't read my last post to this thread which featured Hannah's 'The Edinburgh Woollen Mill', but here's another anyway ...

Ante-Natal

My husband doesn't want to hold the plastic pelvis model.
He tells the other husbands that it's bound to be a doddle.
He thinks the role of classes is to teach, not mollycoddle.
He'll go so far, but not an inch beyond.

My husband is afraid of meeting women called Magenta,
Of sharing wholesome snacks `outside the Early Learning Centre,
Of any exercise that's an incontinence preventor.
He's friendly, but determined not to bond.

My husband listens to my fear, tells me to overcome it,
Changes the subject to the Davos Economic Summit,
Decides that if there's pain he'll ask a nurse to numb it.
He says he doesn't think it sounds that bad.

My husband mocks the books with their advice about nutrition,
He shocks the other couples in the coffee intermission
By saying Ziggy Marley seems in pretty good condition
Despite the smoking habits of his dad.

My husband doesn't care if I'm a leaner or a squatter,
Says pregnancy is no excuse for reading Harry Potter.
He isn't keen on Stephanie or Amos or Carlotta.
Leave it to him; he named our latest car.

On Father's Day my husband gets a card he's not expecting.
I say it's from the baby, with a little redirecting.
He doesn't blame my hormones or insist that I'm projecting.
He says he is the father of a star.

And - in somewhat subtler mode

On Westminster Bridge

I don't believe the building of a bridge
Should be an image that belongs to peace.
Raised eyebrow or the river's hardened ridge,
It wouldn't want hostilities to cease.
Aloof, on tiptoes, it deserts each side
For the high ground and, though it has to touch
Land that real lives have left undignified,
I don't believe it likes that very much.
It knows that every time we try to cross
To a new place, old grudges bind our feet.
It holds out little hope and feels no loss,
Indifferent more than neutral, when we meet
Halfway to transfer ownership of blame,
Then both of us go back the way we came.

Margaret.